British aircraft that the American military should have bought

[McColm]

This topic was suggested by a fellow Whiffer and there's no doubt that it will cause a few debates within the group.
One of the aircraft that the USA should have bought was the A.W. Argosy,  yes there was the Fairchild C-119 Boxcar and the new Lockheed C-130 entering service. So this would have filled the gap, Allison turboprops replacing the Rolls-Royce Dart engines .
Then there's the Fairey Rotodyne,  I'm sure that the Americans would have developed this further. Possibly removing the jet rotor pods and perhaps fitting new engines. Maybe a name change along the way,  but this would have seen service with the Air Force,  Navy,  Marines and the Army,  even the being part of the Presidents' fleet.
I maybe a bit bias in suggesting the HS/BAe Nimrod MR.1 for the USNavy in the maritime patrol role,  built under licence to begin with but with a later fuselage stretch and increased wing area. The engines were already fitted to the  A-7 Corsair so that wouldn't be a problem.
Westland could have teamed up with Lockheed to promote the Lynx and Puma in the USNavy although the Lynx has been used by the USNavy SEALs and the Puma by various County Sheriff Departments.
The EH-101 Merlin should have replaced some of the early SeaHawks in service with the USNavy and possibly the Special Services.
Although the Americans did have their own flying boats during World War II,  the Shorts Sunderland could have been slotted in there somewhere.

[Weaver]

The EH-101 Merlin was actually selected as the new presidential helicopter 'Marine 1' but the order was cancelled, ostensibly to save money, but NBH may have fed into the decision too. If it had been adopted and proved good, you could credibly have seen it in wider US service.

The Puma would be a hard sell because the US Army likes to ship it's helos around the world in USAF transport planes and the Puma is too tall to go into most of them without dismantling the rotor head. This is the reason why Hueys and Blackhawks have such low cabins.

There was a credible(ish) suggestion that USAFE should buy Tornados to take advantage of common logistics. The proposed version would have had GR.1-style nav/attack avionics combined with an F.3-style stretched airframe for more fuel.

Since the USN bought the Hawk (T-45 Goshawk) as it's trainer, you could make a good case for the USAF doing the same, if it decided to retire the T-38s and go subsonic for advanced training like the rest of the world. The USAF version should be easier since it wouldn't need carrier conversion, though of course, that wouldn't neccessarily mean that the USAF wouldn't find a way of making it twice as complicated and three times as expensive...

In the early '80s the USN studied using much bigger COD aircraft, and BAe proposed a BAe-146 derivative to this requirement.

Had the USN gone for the Sea Control Ship idea, the second generation Harrier might have been a clean-sheet-of-paper Uk/US design like the AV-16 or P.1216, rather than the half-step AV-8B, in order to provide it with credible air-defence. That in turn might have had interresting knock-on effects for the USN, USMC, FAA and RAF.

[Rheged]

Blackburn Buccaneer comes to mind.  All of NATO would probably then have adopted it, much to their advantage.

[PR19_Kit]

Let's not mention A330 based tankers then, poor Boeing might get upset..............

[McColm]

I always thought that the Airbus A340 would have been an idea replacement for the Boeing C-135 family or E-3 platform.
The Sea Harrier instead of the AV-8A for the USMarines.
Then there's the Shorts Belfast another contender for the heavy lifting cargo plane,  a sort of stopgap until the C-17 arrived or the A400M to replace a few of the older C-130s.
The Eurofighter Typhoon instead of the F-22, arguably positives and negatives in both camps for which is the best fighter,  with the Typhoon being slightly cheaper to produce with more potential for future development.

[The Rat]

Blackburn Buccaneer comes to mind.  All of NATO would probably then have adopted it, much to their advantage.

Pretty sure that someone here did a USN Bucc a few years ago.

[The Rat]

https://www.whatifmodellers.com/index.php?topic=24649.0

[Weaver]

The problem the Lynx has always had in the export market for army helos is that it's the wrong size: significantly bigger and more expensive than the typical 4/5-seat liason/scout types, yet not big enough to take a full infantry squad comfortably. The bigger WG-30 would have been ideal, being very similar to the current AW-139, but that fell victim to the Westland Affair.

The Lynx is just the right size to take a useful load of ASW weapons or anti-patrol-boat missiles of course, which is why it's done so well in the naval market. It's not particularly cheap, but it's the smallest (and lowest) practical package that can do the job, and that has knock-on consequences for ships designed to carry it.

[PR19_Kit]

Blackburn Buccaneer comes to mind.  All of NATO would probably then have adopted it, much to their advantage.

Pretty sure that someone here did a USN Bucc a few years ago.

I had a Blue Angels Bucc back in the 70s, but it got totalled during a big show at Cranfield.

I started a replacement using the then 'state of the art' Airfix kit some years ago, but it stalled as I couldn't find any yellow paint dense enough to cover the Blue Angels blue airframe.

I might get back on it as I found it only a week or so ago.

[Mossie]

Then there's the Fairey Rotodyne,  I'm sure that the Americans would have developed this further. Possibly removing the jet rotor pods and perhaps fitting new engines. Maybe a name change along the way,  but this would have seen service with the Air Force,  Navy,  Marines and the Army,  even the being part of the Presidents' fleet.

Kaman had a licence for it which included development.  The were particularly keen on selling it to the US Army.  There was the K.140 project which looks very similar to the Rotodyne.
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/kaman-k-list.731/#post-5794

[steelpillow]

Dunne D.8 unstallable safety aeroplane, landplane version, license built as the Burgess-Dunne. Not just the odd evaluation machine we find in the history books, but shedloads as the armed forces' primary trainer. That would have embarrassed the British to buy the Dunne off Armstrong Whitworth, who by now owned the brand, and the French to buy the licensed Nieuport-Dunne. Would have saves countless trainee lives.

Fairey Fox, a revolutionary biplane of the Golden Age, which had a Curtiss engine in already and which was only bought for the RAF as a political goad in order to embarrass the usual suspects into upping their game.

TSR-2. Cancel the expensive and troubled TFX that turned into attack/bomber F-111 and FB-111. Keep makin' the Rolls-Royce jet engines licensed under your own brand names like y'all always did.

B.Ae P.1218 Supersonic V/STOL Harrier derivative. Same Mach 1.5 performance as the V/STOL F-35 JSF but 20 years sooner. We could then have afforded development partnerships for both it and EAP/Eurofighter. The P.1218 was a genuine joint B.Ae-McDonnell Douglas study derived from the UK-only P.1216 project. Intended for the US Navy, it would surely also have allowed the Marines to upgrade their Harrier IIs a tad sooner.

My, this is a fun game!

[jcf]

The C-130 went into service three years before the Argosy first flight.

[jcf]

The EH-101 Merlin was actually selected as the new presidential helicopter 'Marine 1' but the order was cancelled, ostensibly to save money, but NBH may have fed into the decision too. If it had been adopted and proved good, you could credibly have seen it in wider US service.

Nope, it was all about money, the program got unbelievably out of control because of an insane
"we gotta have this, oh and this, oooh that looks yummy etc." requirements creep development
process. Even when internal audits, and outside oversight like GAO, were pointing out how
financially ridiculous it was getting and being explicit about program mismanagement, they just
kept going.

NBH doesn't fly in this case as the heavily redesigned AW101/US101 had a 65% US work-share,
the legislators from the states that would have had the work, from both sides of the aisle, were
highly pissed-off about the cancelation.

[jcf]

In short, you're asking which Brit. aircraft programs should have been underwritten
by the US taxpayer.
The answer is none. 

[steelpillow]

In short, you're asking which Brit. aircraft programs should have been underwritten
by the US taxpayer.
The answer is none. 

Sometimes I think we need a troll icon, posts like that really belong on twitter or facebook. You don't work for a Russian e-propaganda agency do you?

But hey, let's just assume this is a What-If forum and international trade is (mindboggling thought for some, though it seems) actually permissible in whiffland.